But the Institute of Medicine recommends that adults get 45-65 percent of their calories from carbohydrates to provide enough energy and fuel for physical activity and good health.

Bah! CW!

Healthy carb substitutes include whole grains, such as high-fiber oat-bran cereal and brown rice, beans for protein and fiber, ...

Bah hum! More CW!

Ashton stressed that you should consult your doctor before starting any diet, especially if you have health issues. For example, people with a history of heart disease should probably avoid a low-carb diet that focuses on meats, because of its saturated fats.

And still more classic CW nonsense!!

“It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.”
—Robert A. Heinlein

Perhaps it's not the low carbs and high fat and protein that caused the higher death rates, but the BAD sources of animal protein and fat that caused the higher death rates. Mark's Daily Apple stresses the importance of eating organic and grass-fed animal products as much as possible. Conventional corn-fed animal products produce unhealthy fats (heart disease) and pesticide-laden fats (cancer). How can they still recommend whole grains with their insulin-increasing properties, their phytates and lectins? Any thoughts??

"Check the nutrition facts panel on the back of the package to see if the contents fit into the type of diet you're aiming for -- this packaged food is supposed to be part of an overall diet -- and just because it's low in carbs doesn't mean it's low in calories. A good rule of thumb is to always look for that Nutrition Facts panel on the package."

I don't read labels since I eat primally....

I enjoy my grass fed beef that is chilling in my chest freezer. That does not have a label because its a whole food that was purchased from a local farm. Ok, my organic chicken has a label but I do the best I can. Whole grains are not for me. I don't follow a low carb diet. I just live the way my body wants me to live. Ironically that is the same as the primal lifestyle.

Abstract : http://www.annals.org/content/153/5/289.abstract
Interestingly, the editors of the journal seemed to have reservations about the study: http://www.annals.org/content/153/5/337.extract
And the Annals of Internal Medicine website is running an online poll right now -- readers most likely being physicians. The poll asks: When advising patients about weight loss, which of the following types of diets to you most often recommend: Low carb, low fat, other, or no specific diet? Low carb is winning with 45% of the votes so far.

The full study isn't available without a subscription, and the abstract gives no clue as to how the diets were assessed and what kind of co-factors were considered. I would also want to know if the study's authors are vegetarians. They have great credentials and no stated conflicts of interest, but call me suspicious, it did occur to me that the abstract reads like a study undertaken by vegetarians who are alarmed at the growing popularity of low carb diets.

Sounds like they did an analysis from the self-reported questionnaires which went back to 1980 -- don't think there were many well-thought-out low-carb approaches back then! I would wager the low-carb people were still chowing down on grains as their primary source of carbs.

Here's part of the fulltext:

" The fat, protein, and carbohydrate scores were summed to create the overall low-carbohydrate diet score, which ranged from 0 to 30. In addition, we also created a vegetable low-carbohydrate score, on the basis of the percentage of energy of carbohydrate, vegetable protein, and vegetable fat. In addition, we created an animal low-carbohydrate score on the basis of the percentage of energy of carbohydrate, animal protein, and animal fat. Thus, each participant was given the overall animal and vegetable scores... We identified deaths from state vital statistics records, the National Death Index, families, and the postal system."
...
"In multivariate analyses, we adjusted for age (continuous), physical activity (quintiles), BMI (5 categories), energy intake (quintiles), alcohol intake (4 categories), history of hypertension (yes or no), smoking status (5 categories), and multivitamin use (yes or no), with updated information at each 2-year questionnaire cycle. In women, we also adjusted for menopausal status and postmenopausal hormone use (4 categories). In secondary analysis, we also adjusted for having had a physical examination (yes or no) at each 2-year questionnaire cycle because this may be related to early disease detection and hence better prognosis. Persons with missing BMI were excluded from baseline (2%). Smoking status was missing for 0.2% of the participants in NHS and 4% participants in HPFS at baseline."
....
"Our study has limitations. The low-carbohydrate diet scores were not designed to mimic any particular versions of low-carbohydrate diets available in the popular literature. Therefore, the risk estimates do not directly translate to the assessment of benefit or risk associated with the popular versions of the diet."
...
"These results suggest that the health effects of a low-carbohydrate diet may depend on the type of protein and fat, and a diet that includes mostly vegetable sources of protein and fat is preferable to a diet with mostly animal sources of protein and fat."

That last bit makes me suspect that of the two low-carb groups, the vegetable group was eating more vegetables overall. I imagine that factor could be making the difference here.

Considering how many veggies we eat in addition to our animal proteins, I wonder how they would've classified us in these two groups? I guess we'd still fall into the animal group considering that's our primary protein source... but I would also guarantee we eat a lot more vegetables and fruits than most of the animal group from 1980 did...

Wonderful! You have the full study! I requested it, too. I want to know: Did they provide any comparison of death rates between their low carb people and the others on the SAD? The low carbers must be a subset of the full Nurses study. It's one thing to say that veggie-based low carb is better than animal-based low carb, but there aren't very many studies that follow low-carb diets long enough to get mortality rates. It's rather odd that that isn't mentioned. Suppose that overall, low carb resulted in a 10% mortality reduction while the veggie rate was 10.5% lower than the SAD rate, and the animal rate was 9.5% lower. That would be a 10% difference between the two (percentages can be tricky), but it would be dwarfed by the 10% difference between low-carb and SAD. THAT would be news -- it's an obvious factor, why wasn't it in the press release?

BTW, Atkins was around in 1980 -- low carb back then was more likely to be his approach which would be meat, sat fat, low carb veggies (but not necessarily many of them) and lots of dairy. Also a lot of processed meat and pro baby no organic category. I'm wondering what a vegetable-based low carb diet was.... How did they find enough people eating that much tofu to get reliable stats?

I have access to basically every health journal ever through work. Shhh, don't tell anybody. I should really start posting in the Research forum more!

I'm home now though, so I can't see the paper to check your Qs. As I recall they were asserting that the veggie-low-carb had a lower mortality rate than average (which would be the SAD, right?) and the meat-low-carb had a higher rate than average. Of course anybody on an unusual diet probably has major health concerns already, too... sounds like they tried to account for at least some of that, which is good.

And yeah, that's why the idea of this going back to 1980 makes me raise an eyebrow Early meaty-low-carb was kind of horrifying to me, with hardcore extremists avoiding all veggies and shooting for zero-carb, etc...

I can't imagine how they found enough people to get real stats for the veggie group. I'll check how many people were actually in each group, if they say.